Tag Meghan Trainor

83 millions reasons to be happy

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

If it is true that we like to see good things happen to good people, I suppose it’s also true that we like to see bad things happen to bad people.  I know I do.  So today is a very happy day indeed, to see that a New York jury has awarded $83.3 million in damages to the writer suing Donald Trump for “defaming her in social media posts, news conferences and even on the campaign trail ever since she first accused him in 2019 of raping her in a department store dressing room decades earlier.”  Most of that, $65 million, is punitive damages – punishment for the defendant’s conduct.  Well done, sir!

I’d be stunned (shocked, like Claude Rains was) if Trump ever paid the money – he has a long history of delaying and deferring and settling lawsuits for pennies on the dollar with adversaries who’d rather take something than nothing at all – but it is heartening any time he doesn’t get his way with his bullying and bloviating and insistent lying.  Lying, like just last night, when he repeated his worn-out self-defense of the original rape/sexual assault allegation, insisting “I don’t even know who this woman is.  I have no idea who she is, where she came from.”  In present tense.  Really?  Even if that were true years ago when the accusation was first made, how can you honestly claim today that you do not now know who she is?  Is telling the truth just that hard for you?  (“I know you lie, your lips are moving…”)

This has also been an opportunity for the former guy to give us another demonstration – as if we needed one – of his wide-ranging ignorance.  He used his own social media service this afternoon to say he disagrees with all the verdicts in this case, that he will appeal today’s decision on damages, that he blames Democrats for the suit in the first place (huh?), and that some unspecified “they” have “taken away all First Amendment rights,” presumably by limiting his testimony in court and restricting some of the witnesses his lawyers wanted to call.  Of course, “they” have not and did not do that.  At all.  But you knew that.

You knew that the First Amendment right to free speech does not mean that we are all endowed with the right to say any thing we want, at any time we want, any where we want, to any body we want, and that no one can do any thing about it.  The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring your speech or other expressions of opinion, unless the speech in question falls into one of the categories which the courts have determined are NOT protected: child pornography, or a solicitation to commit a crime, for instance…or in this case, speech that is defamatory.

Judges have a right to run their courts; a higher court can punish this one if he is found to have violated the law.  Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen in this case.

Meanwhile, there are more courts hearing cases against you know who: the judge in the New York civil fraud trial against Trump and his business promised a ruling before the end of the month, and then there are the rest of the now-famous 91 indictments, including the it-seems-really-clear-he-did-it classified documents case in Florida.  AND some Republicans are starting to admit, publicly, that Trump’s acknowledged efforts to get the GOP to refuse to compromise with Democrats to pass an immigration bill…

…Trump has been lobbying Republicans both in private conversations and in public statements on social media to oppose the border compromise being delicately hashed out in the Senate, according to GOP sources familiar with the conversations – in part because he wants to campaign on the issue this November and doesn’t want President Joe Biden to score a victory in an area where he is politically vulnerable.

…are bad for the party and bad for the country.  Of course, what is good for the party and good for the country have never been priorities for the former guy.

He’s playing you for a fool; don’t prove him right

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

To everyone who is pissed off at what America’s political system has devolved into, let me say, I get it; I’m with you.  It shouldn’t too much to ask for a political and governmental system that can get things done, that treats people fairly, and that will be about protecting the freedom of all its citizens.  I get it that you want something better; so do I.  But just because you hate Hillary Clinton is not a good enough reason to turn power over to an ignorant, truth-impaired narcissistic megalomaniac with the attention span of a two year old.

Donald Trump is a liar.  I don’t mean that in the sense that all politicians shade the truth in order to put things in the best light–the one that shines on themselves; I mean to say that Trump lies to us.  All the time.  About things that matter, and about things that don’t matter.  He just does.  He may not even see that he’s making this shit up as he goes along, but he says whatever will make him look good in the eyes of the people he’s talking to…and if that’s not true, if it contradicts what he told the crowd yesterday or the day before, no matter.  It’s as if he doesn’t think anyone will remember.

But we do!  And telling the truth matters, or it should, to all of us.  Regardless of what you think of Clinton, do you really want a president who lies consistently, if not constantly?  (“I know you’re lyin/Cause your lips are moving…”)  He lies when it’s convenient, he lies when he’s caught in a lie, he lies to promote himself, he lies when telling the truth would be just fine…he lies to try to persuade us all that the world of his imagination is the real world we all inhabit together.  He lies.

The New York Times has a long list of Trump’s lies…31 from just this week!  They’re broken down into “Tales About Himself,” “Unfounded Claims About Critics and the News Media,” “Inaccurate Claims About Clinton,” “Stump Speech Falsehoods” and “Esoteric Embellishments.”  I won’t bother with the most famous ones; others include:

◊He said a supportive crowd chanted, “Let him speak!” when a black pastor in Flint, Mich., asked Mr. Trump not to give a political speech in the church. (Fox News interview, Sept. 15.)
–There were no such chants.
◊“You see what’s happening with my poll numbers with African-Americans. They’re going, like, high.” (Speech in North Carolina, Sept. 20; made same claim in Ohio, Sept. 21.)
–Polls show him winning virtually no support from African-Americans.
◊“Almost, it seems, everybody agrees” with his position on immigration. (Remarks in Texas, Sept. 17
-Most Americans oppose his signature positions on immigration.
◊The presidential debate moderators “are all Democrats.” “It’s a very unfair system.” (Fox News interview, Sept. 19.
–Only one, Chris Wallace of Fox News, is a registered Democrat.
◊He said it “hasn’t been reported” that Mrs. Clinton called some Trump supporters “deplorable.”  (Speech in North Carolina, Sept. 20)
–It would be difficult to find a news organization that didn’t report her remark.
◊Mrs. Clinton destroyed 13 smartphones with a hammer while she was secretary of state.
(Speeches in Florida, Sept. 15 and Sept. 19.)
–An aide told the F.B.I. of only two occasions in which phones were destroyed with a hammer.
◊Mrs. Clinton is “effectively proposing to abolish the borders around the country.”(Numerous speeches, including in Texas, Sept. 17.)
–She is not even proposing to cut funding for the Border Patrol.

 

Look at the publications that have endorsed Clinton.  It’s not just The New York Times, it’s places that haven’t endorsed any Democrat in generations: The Cincinnati Enqurier has endorsed the Republican candidate for a hundred years, and although it has problems with Clinton it still said no to Trump:

Trump is a clear and present danger to our country. He has no history of governance that should engender any confidence from voters. Trump has no foreign policy experience, and the fact that he doesn’t recognize it – instead insisting that, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do” – is even more troubling. His wild threats to blow Iranian ships out of the water if they make rude gestures at U.S. ships is just the type of reckless, cowboy diplomacy Americans should fear from a Trump presidency. Clinton has been criticized as being hawkish but has shown a measured approach to the world’s problems. Do we really want someone in charge of our military and nuclear codes who has an impulse control problem? The fact that so many top military and national security officials are not supporting Trump speaks volumes.

The Dallas Morning News feels that “Resume vs. resume, judgment vs. judgment, this election is no contest.”

Those are real shortcomings [for Clinton]. But they pale in comparison to the litany of evils some opponents accuse her of. Treason? Murder? Her being cleared of crimes by investigation after investigation has no effect on these political hyenas; they refuse to see anything but conspiracies and cover-ups.

We reject the politics of personal destruction. Clinton has made mistakes and displayed bad judgment, but her errors are plainly in a different universe than her opponent’s.

Trump’s values are hostile to conservatism. He plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control.

The Los Angeles Times:

Donald J. Trump, a billionaire businessman and television personality…has never held elected office and has shown himself temperamentally unfit to do so. He has run a divisive, belligerent, dishonest campaign, repeatedly aligning himself with racists, strongmen and thugs while maligning or dismissing large segments of the American public. Electing Trump could be catastrophic for the nation.

I can’t sign on with someone who says, seemingly with all sincerity, that he will deport many millions of people from this country–but can’t explain how he plans to accomplish it–and that he will make another country pay for our border security–even after the leaders of that country say they will not and you can’t make me–and that he knows more about fighting foreign terrorists than the military professionals–really, how do you know that?–and lies about, well, he lies about what feels like everything else.

The only thing I can think of that Trump possibly has in his favor is that he is not Hillary Clinton.  When the campaigns started rolling last year, my hope was that certainly the Democrats wouldn’t nominate Clinton: there had to be other, better, trustworthy candidates, and I don’t want to have to listen to the litany of conservative freakout about her all over again.  But Trump’s not being Clinton isn’t enough, not when what he is turns out to be so disqualifying.

The biggest lie is right there on the front of his stupid cap: no matter what he says, no matter what stories he makes up to tell you what he thinks you want to hear, no matter how he tries to appeal to the lesser angels of our nature, the fact is America is great and always has been.  Because of its people, and the ideals that we try to live up to, this is a great country.  I didn’t say it was perfect, but Trump is lying to our face when he insinuates that America is anything less than great, and that he is the only person who can fix it.  It’s time to call him out to his lying face.